


Could be kissing my fruit punch lips in the bright sunshine (never find a love like this)

by heart_nouveau



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, American Politics, F/F, Gardens & Gardening, Highgarden
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 05:09:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heart_nouveau/pseuds/heart_nouveau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were very few things that made Margaery nervous. Nothing fazed her, not speaking in front of the whole school as student council vice-president, or delivering a perfect game-winning serve for the junior varsity tennis team—but she had been trembling with nerves the first time she and Sansa had kissed.</p>
<p>A sunny summer fic about Sansa and Margaery making out in a garden shed. (And a little bit more than that, too.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Could be kissing my fruit punch lips in the bright sunshine (never find a love like this)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Dedicated to daughterofthorns, who just returned to AO3. Welcome back, darling! We missed you. 
> 
> Inspired by [this](http://the-roseroad.tumblr.com/post/51945062874/i-suddenly-just-realized-that-all-i-want-is-a) photo. [Here](http://the-roseroad.tumblr.com/post/52337379043/modern-game-of-thrones-settings-highgarden-love), and below, are some of my inspirations for Highgarden.
> 
>  

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“Why don’t you just work for your grandmother?” 

Margaery looked at her father in surprise. Her dad’s ideas were generally not that great, so it was unusual that he was proposing something she would actually consider.

“Mace,” her mother cut in calmly, “Margaery is going to be a junior next year. It’s important that she start training into the family business.” 

Mace Tyrell scoffed, folding his arms over his broad chest. “She’s still young enough to have a crappy summer job, isn’t she? I worked on the Highgarden grounds when I was in high school—for three years! It’ll be good for her.”

Margaery’s mother looked irritated. “What would be _good_ for her would be to get some practical job experience.”

Knowing that her other options were retail, working at a restaurant, or pushing paper in an air-conditioned office all summer, Margaery concealed a tiny yawn by exhaling through her nose, then shifted patiently back in her lawn chair. She knew perfectly well that all she had to do was watch, letting her parents argue until they were exasperated enough to just let her make the decision herself.

“There’s plenty of time for her to get trained into all that, honey," her dad was saying. "The politics aren’t going anywhere, and she already knows more about it than any teenage kid should. Besides, working at Highgarden will remind her of her roots.” He chuckled at his own bad pun. “She’ll be spending time with Mother, and how can that be bad? Olenna adores her.” Her dad was highly supportive of Margaery’s relationship with her grandmother, which Margaery thought was awfully sweet considering how little he had to do with it.

Alerie pinched her mouth, looking like she might roll her eyes. “She’d be _gardening_ for three months. How do you think that’ll look on a college application?”

“Like she has character,” said Mace cheerfully. He was apparently pretty determined about this; usually he gave in to her mom without too much of a struggle. “Margaery, what do you think?”

“I think… I’d like to,” Margaery decided, biting thoughtfully on one pink-polished nail. Then she put her hand down and smiled with more conviction, internally congratulating herself on waiting it out. She was grateful that her parents wanted what was best for her, of course, but she was also grateful for the fact they were incredibly predictable.

“Is this really what you want to do?” Alerie asked her daughter, looking slightly pained. “For an entire summer?”

“Yeah,” she said, surprising even herself. _Why not?_ Her dad had a point. The politics weren’t going anywhere. 

Alerie gave a sharp exhale of breath and took a sip of her raspberry iced tea. “All right, Margaery, it’s your choice. But that means next year, you’re going to have to start the hard work.”

“I know, Mom.” Margaery shot an appreciative look at her unlikely ally, her dad. He smiled fondly back at her and rolled his eyes a little. She couldn’t help but return his grin, and was surprised by how brightly she smiled back, and just how much she meant it. 

                              .............................................................................................................................................. 

  
Her family liked to joke that there were two family businesses—the politics, and the flowers. After her highly publicized exit from the national stage years ago, when she’d stepped down from office after serving decades as a congresswoman, Margaery’s grandmother Olenna now exclusively dedicated her time to cultivating the heirloom roses and showplace gardens of their family’s ancestral home. The Tyrell roses had won international recognition, but that wasn’t the reason the family grew them. While accolades from the American Rose Society were nice, they had nothing on a tradition of gardening that had run in her family as far back as anyone could remember.

For now, Margaery was just really relieved to be done with the sophomore year rigmarole of six Advanced Placement courses, and more than ready for a change of pace and a chance to spend time with her grandmother _just_ as family, nothing more. Her grandmother had agreed to the job proposal as readily Margaery had hoped she would. So it was nice to know that her grandmother, at least, valued all the Tyrell traditions equally, as well as the concept of family above all things. 

There was just one thing that could make this summer job better. “It’ll be kind of dirty,” Margaery said over the phone that evening, her light tone not betraying the butterflies that fluttered in her stomach. She paced back and forth across her bedroom floor, unable to keep still. “It’s gardening, after all, and there’s always going to be a lot to do. But we’ll get two dollars over minimum wage, and we only have to work in the mornings. And you always said you wanted to visit Highgarden, so…”

“Yes,” said her best friend on the other line. “I’d love to.” She let out an eager breath and a little noise that sounded like maybe she was smiling, and Margaery’s heart lifted with excitement.

She’d actually been a bit embarrassed to ask her friend about the job when it came down to it. She’d thought that Sansa, who always liked things so delicate and neat, might balk at the idea of gardening all summer, spending three months crawling around in rose beds and getting covered in fertilizer. Margaery had never told Sansa that she’d spent practically her entire childhood on the grounds of Highgarden, learning everything she knew about gardening (and eventually, a lot more than that) at her grandmother’s knee. That kind of past, after all, didn’t exactly go with the polished persona that Sansa knew so well from school.

But her best friend had actually gasped at the first sight of Highgarden, and her wide-eyed appreciation had made Margaery pause, re-seeing the beauty that she’d gotten used to at a young age. The estate was pretty impressive, she knew—from the sprawling house and expansive grounds, the trellised gardens and checkerboard flowerbeds, the massive stone fountain carved in a series of graceful flying arches, to the stunning pergola that wrapped around the entire west side of the gardens, shaded in cascades of climbing roses in every color from ivory to peach-pink to gold. There were elegantly maintained topiaries, endless beds of luscious Floribunda and hybrid tea roses, and three different test gardens. The south lawn was crowned with an enclosed garden of rare Old World roses: Bourbon, damask, Noisette, musk, Centifolia, the kinds that would have grown in long-ago European princesses’ gardens, and which were so delicate that they only bloomed once a year. So, yeah, it was for good reason that Highgarden had gained semi-legendary status as the East Coast Tyrells’ family estate—again, not just for the politics, but also for the flowers. Despite its fame, the closest most people would ever get to seeing Highgarden was through the various coffee table books or magazine spreads dedicated to its grounds and French colonial-style main house. If you were a political mover and shaker, you might be lucky enough to be invited to one of the annual estate tours. Or if you were really important, you might get invited to one of the star-studded Democratic Party fundraisers that Margaery’s grandmother hosted on occasion, nighttime alfresco dinner parties with guest lists in the hundreds, which were always breathlessly chronicled in Vanity Fair and Vogue.

But for Margaery, Highgarden had always just been the house where her grandmother lived, and for the two of them that summer, it was the place where they showed up for work every morning at eight A.M., and where they never ran out of labor-intensive gardening tasks to complete. Sansa took up rose gardening like she was born to do it, and impressed the entire roster of gardeners with her readiness to work hard and without complaint. She was a quick, attentive learner, and quickly memorized all of the roses’ names and classifications; she especially liked the ones named after ancient members of the Tyrell family (and had been disproportionately excited to discover that Margaery had a namesake rose, a gorgeous satiny Floribunda that had been an All-American Rose Selection the year it was released). The job kept them running all morning, from their arrival until they finished at noon—so as far as summer jobs went, it wasn’t half bad. But, as Margaery soon discovered, there were other benefits as well.

One sultry afternoon Olenna Tyrell came out on the porch dressed in crisp Carolina Herrera, and unexpectedly called them in for tea. The girls didn’t often see the former congresswoman, who spent her summer mornings reading the news or taking guests on the shaded south-facing veranda. Sometimes she would give the two of them a cool wave when she emerged to survey the progress on her newly designed arbor of prized double-pink climbing roses, but she hadn’t spoken to Sansa since they’d been formally introduced at the beginning of the summer. The impromptu tea party was set up in the impeccable west sunroom, which was filled with white gardenias and fragrant Alba roses. Sitting with perfect posture in her chair, Sansa looked pale with nerves. But she answered Olenna’s trademark to-the-point questions with a voice that was as steady as it was quiet.

“I’ve always admired your work as part of the 1970s feminist movement,” Sansa said suddenly, after a long lull of merely answering Olenna’s line of questioning with well-spoken meekness. “It’s hard to imagine fighting for such radical changes in a cultural climate that was even more repressive than today’s. It just seems like it must have been such an uphill struggle.”

And Margaery, whose second language was deciphering her grandmother’s emotions, could tell by the little crimp of her mouth that Olenna was pleased. That was good. At the very least, it meant that she didn’t find Sansa a complete idiot, which was better than the judgment she passed on lot of people.

_Also, Sansa, where the hell did_ that _come from?_ She’d never even heard Sansa talk about women’s rights, but it seemed like maybe Margaery’s breezy brand of feminism was rubbing off on her. Or maybe it was just another one of Sansa’s interests that she’d kept to herself, for Margaery had learned that her best friend had the terrible habit of keeping her mouth shut in order to seem less intelligent than she really was.

Anyway, Margaery was pleased to pull Sansa away after and find her wearing a slightly dazed smile. “See, my grandma’s not so bad, is she?” Margaery teased, squeezing her friend’s hand.

“No—I mean, she’s really scary. But she’s also kind of amazing.” Sansa looked a little shell-shocked, which was normal. People usually looked that way after meeting Olenna Tyrell for the first time. She was, after all, _the_ Olenna Tyrell, one of the very first women to ever hold national political office in the United States, the woman whose take-no-prisoners political style had been so enormously successful that everyone in American politics had been surprised when she’d decided to retire instead of running for presidential office.

“But Margaery, if there’s a next time… can it be on a day that we’re _not_ working? It was so awful having to go in that beautiful room looking like this.” Sansa indicated her dirty T-shirt and cut-offs, and Margaery had to bite back a ripple of fond laughter. She made a mental note to have Sansa invited back only when she was given ample opportunity to wear the outfit of her choice. 

                              .............................................................................................................................................. 

One morning they were working in the test gardens on a new, finicky strain of white roses that had petals tinged faintly with ice blue. The roses were temperamental, wilting and refusing to bloom, so the lead gardener sent them to the garden shed on the far end of the west grounds for some special aerated fertilizer.

“Did he say to get the fertilizer with the red label or the blue label?” asked Sansa, looking around at the shelves as she peeled off her dirt-covered gloves.

Margaery hung back, deliberately unhelpful. “Um, the blue, I think,” she said.

Her heart squeezed with affection as she watched Sansa look searchingly over the shelves, face fixed in concentration. Sansa’s ladylike wardrobe had been all but abandoned for the summer—the oversize T-shirt tied up around her waist now revealed the cutest sliver of tummy, and her hair was in two messy braids. She looked good tan, too, with a smattering of freckles highlighted across the bridge of her nose (where every morning she fastidiously applied Neutrogena SPF 30, just like her redheaded mother taught her). Margaery herself had thrown on some overalls—yes, overalls, an old broken-in pair that she’d found in one of the greenhouses where they’d probably been sitting since her father had worked here—and tied her long hair up in a topknot.

Sansa straightened up from her crouching position, where she’d been inspecting the contents of the lowest shelves. Feeling sort of like the woodsman (or the wolf, or prince, take your pick) corrupting the innocent princess in a fairytale, Margaery stepped quietly up behind her friend and slipped her hand across the exposed skin of Sansa’s stomach, tucking the tip of one finger under the curled top edge of her denim shorts. She inhaled the scent of Sansa’s hair and, heat flickering in every inch of her skin, moved her body up against Sansa’s from behind, pressing her hips into Sansa's ass.

“Oh,” Sansa said, pushing out a little so she could turn around and lock them together, waist to waist with her hands at Margaery's hips, her face creasing into a smile of sweet surprise. “Hi.”

“Hi,” said Margaery, and pulled Sansa closer. And then she kissed her.  

There were very few things that made Margaery nervous. Nothing fazed her, not speaking in front of the whole school as student council vice-president, or delivering a perfect game-winning serve for the junior varsity tennis team—but she had been trembling with nerves the first time she and Sansa had kissed. Burning with a sudden crush that had flared up, seemingly out of nowhere, to hold her hostage for _months_ , Margaery had been dying from the way she felt, dying every time she was next to Sansa and couldn’t hold her the way she wanted to. How could she go on like that, she’d thought desperately, without filling up the space between them?

The warm, soft way her best friend had started to look at her, though, gave Margaery courage. It made her do it. So, two weeks after they’d started working at Highgarden, Margaery had leaned over the bed of China hybrid teas, laced her fingers through Sansa’s, and kissed her cheek with a hesitancy that said she wasn’t doing it as a joke. She'd felt the younger girl go shivery still. Then Sansa’s eyelashes brushed Margaery’s face in an accidental butterfly kiss as she turned slowly to face her— and the look she’d given Margaery had relieved all of Margaery’s doubts. And so, very gently, her heart jumping like the frenetic beat of a pop song, she’d leaned in and kissed Sansa on her slightly parted lips. It had felt (and she remembered as clearly if she’d taken a photograph of that very moment) the hot yet painless way that sparklers feel when they fall on your skin.

They kept on kissing until they were breathless, putting their hands in the dirt as they leaned forward and then on each other as they pressed close. When they finally pulled back, there was one wide-eyed moment of just staring at each other, long enough to acknowledge how much everything had just changed between them. Sansa had let out a little laugh like she couldn’t really believe it—and Margaery couldn’t stop smiling, and then they were both laughing, and after all that she’d just put her forehead against Sansa’s and rested there, light with ecstatic relief.

Margaery had always been able to get any boy she wanted, easily, and she usually kept a few hanging around just for good measure. But this summer her sort-of boyfriend Mark Mullendore had been going off to be a camp counselor in the Riverlands anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal to tell him that she wanted to break things off for the summer. She was glad she had, because it had never been like this with anybody else. Because with Sansa, now, everything was different. 

Sansa tasted like Burt’s Bees pomegranate chapstick and the Starburst they’d just eaten, giggling, balling the wrappers deep into their pockets. “Oh my gosh— _careful_!” she gasped against Margaery’s mouth as Margaery proceeded to back her into the wall of the shed, right up against the shelves lining the glass-paned walls, knocking things to the ground as she went. Margaery was vaguely aware of stepping on some gardening detritus on the shed floor, spades and buckets and terracotta planters clattering under her feet—although they honestly could have exploded, for all she cared just then.

“Oh, oops,” she murmured at last, kicking something out of her way, and pulled her head back to glance at the fallen things in faux concern. She waited a moment. Sansa’s eyes grew big and blue as she watched, and it was so cute to see her pout impatiently, waiting for Margaery to kiss her again, until she released a comically exasperated sigh. “Oh, what _ever_.” And she leaned in and kissed Margaery herself, hungrily like a little animal, a red fox, which was what Margaery always thought of for some reason when her tongue dragged across Sansa’s pearly little teeth, white and sharp.

Summer had made things easier just as she had hoped it would, painting everything with sweet lazy warmth. Every day centered around seeing Sansa, chatting over the beds of double-blooming roses; trailing sunny, familiar fingers down each other’s hands and legs and arms as they worked side-by-side; leaning forward to steal quick, sugared, furtive kisses when nobody was looking. They blasted Katy Perry and Macklemore on the radio until Margaery’s grandmother emerged in imperious silence from the veranda to change the station. Margaery pulled a face when she left, pretending to hate the oldies music, but soon enough she was slow dancing with Sansa between rows of roses, swaying in a rosy haze to the dreamy vocals of Ella Fitzgerald. _Ella’s right_ , Margaery thought on that sun-kissed afternoon, pressing her cheek to Sansa’s and closing her eyes, _this_ is _heaven_. It was absolutely heaven.

Later that summer they would grow bolder, sunbathing on the Highgarden lawn in the afternoon, Margaery leaning over to kiss Sansa full on the mouth while shading them with her glamorously oversized straw sun hat. They biked to work together on beach cruisers, sometimes on just one bike with Margaery pedaling standing up as Sansa balanced on the seat behind, holding her around the waist. They shared sticky Diet Cokes topped with maraschino cherries, and fresh peaches and shortbread cookies stolen from Margaery’s grandmother’s pantry. Gardening was hard work, after all, and by the time they finished every afternoon, they were content to lie around for the rest of the day, maybe hit the beach or go for gelato at the café by the ocean. They drew tattoos in Sharpie on each others’ arms, legs, backs, shoulders, wrists, ankles, being extra careful to hide the scrawled flowers and scrolled cursive with their sweatshirts as they waved goodbye to Margaery’s grandmother.

Margaery smoothed her thumbs over Sansa’s cheeks, the skin there as silky as rose petals when they’d been misted with water, and remembered all the secret ways she knew her best friend. She thought of Sansa, drowsy and sweet in the mornings when she slept over at Margaery’s, her auburn hair all mussed as she emerged from the bathroom, looking every one of her fifteen years in a oversize T-shirt and some girly sleep shorts. The way she nuzzled into Margaery’s shoulder when they watched movies, thoughtlessly expectant for affection, and the way she always hogged the popcorn. How she loved certain films with Audrey Hepburn, which was just one of those things that she would unthinkingly admit to liking and then clam up about for fear that they weren’t cool.

There was something soft and unformed still in Sansa, something that Margaery couldn’t help but love. It was something she drew out of Margaery in turn, a softness that Margaery had sort of thought she’d had to bury deep inside her to become the fast-talking, easy-smiling queen bee she was at school.

Yes, things were different at school—and it was funny how fast things could change, had changed for them. Last fall, they were total strangers. Sansa’s virginal reputation had preceded her thanks to her boyfriend, the tyrannical lacrosse captain Joff Baratheon, and his asshole friends. Joffrey was in Margaery’s grade, and a complete dick. Margaery never figured out why the sex that Joffrey and Sansa were having, or not having, was worth making public knowledge. Probably because Joff figured it would be more humiliating to keep dating a girl and tell everyone about her shortcomings than to just dump her and be done with it. So the two of them were still dating when Margaery befriended Sansa in the girls’ bathroom with an offer to share her Chanel lipgloss, thinking that she had never seen such a pretty girl look so sad. With her signature sweet smile, Margaery dropped a few hints about how nice it was to have a boyfriend who treated you right… and just a few days later, Sansa stopped her in the hall, beaming, to announce that she’d dumped Joff’s ass for good. Margaery had invited her out to the mall right on the spot. Never let it be said that Margaery was not a Good Samaritan.

Her plan had been to set Sansa up with one of her then-boyfriend Trystane’s friends from the JV soccer team, but while hanging out during Sansa’s mandated “rebound” time (per Margaery’s instructions), something happened. The day that Sansa asked Margaery to help fasten her necklace, sitting in Sansa’s jewel-box of a bedroom as they prepared to go out, everything changed. When Margaery bent to fasten the little gold clasp, she suddenly noticed how baby powder-soft the skin was at the nape of the younger girl’s neck, and the intoxicating smell of her reddish-gold hair, swept away over Sansa’s shoulder. It was different, something that she had never noticed or maybe never known before—and she suddenly realized that she liked it. Something gave a little tug in her chest, like something had melted or fallen into place inside her. In political speeches, her grandmother Olenna told her, politicians were often guilty of using the slippery-slope argument. _Well,_ she’d thought dazedly, _falling for Sansa Stark is a slippery slope all right_.

Now Margaery bent her head to give Sansa a necklace of soft kisses, and Sansa giggled and pressed up into Margaery’s arms trustingly. “Do you like it?” Margaery asked softly, and Sansa nodded, tipping her neck back for more. She was still a little in awe of Margaery, who was a grade older. Margaery thought (but had never asked) that she was probably one of the few people Sansa had ever kissed, besides Joffrey—if not the only other person. The tentativeness with which Sansa had responded to Margaery’s first advances said that she’d done some things in the past that she hadn’t quite been ready for, and that she’d learned to accept these things with a sense of obligation as opposed to any genuine desire for them. _God, Sansa, why did you feel like you had to do any of that?_

So when Sansa made soft sighing noises like that, and arched up in her hands like that, Margaery’s heart squeezed and she knew that what they had was something really special. Really, really special.

She never really talked about it, though. Contrary to what her alpha-girl school reputation might make people think, and as much as she talked at school, as good as she was at sweet-talking teachers or putting people in their place with a perfectly calibrated comment, Margaery was actually really bad at talking about things like this. She was fantastic when it came to talking about things that didn’t matter. But when things were serious, when they really meant something _personal_ —like the question she really, really wanted to ask Sansa—she just couldn’t say it.

Margaery wrapped her arms around the neck of the girl she wanted to be her girlfriend, and breathed in softly.

This was the last summer that didn’t “really” matter. In the fall she would get her license, and soon she would have a car. Next summer, as her mother continually reminded her, she was going to have to start working for the congressman who had succeeded her grandmother, starting to be officially trained into the political machinery behind her family’s All-American empire. She knew with hard rigid certainty that she would chart the same path as her grandmother, perhaps even cutting a wider swath.

But she didn’t give a damn if loving her best friend didn’t fit the perfect picture of what a young female politician was supposed to be. And who cared what they said about summer romances? Margaery _knew_ she wasn’t going to let things change between her and Sansa when summer came to an end.

She was going to make room for Sansa Stark in her life, no matter what it cost her.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _ETA:_ Now with a sequel, [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3320732).
> 
> Title from 'Lolyta' by Lana del Rey and 'Love Like This' by Natasha Bedingfield ft. Sean Kingston.


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